Like everything else,it all depends on the context. What most people think of as "badass" is leading the intervention on critically ill patients. In the setting of a big trauma that would be the trauma surgeon (including cracking the chest in the ED if necessary, generally not CT surg). If that trauma's most life-threatening injury is a big epidural then suddenly the neurosurgeon is the "badass." If a patient is crashing in the ICU then it's the intensivist, Unless of course its due to intra-abdominal sepsis (General Surgery to the rescue!) or a STEMI (Cardiology to the rescue!). Or the patient has acute urinary retention and a difficult foley and the Urologist is the hero!! (I keed). In reality it's a pointless argument to have. In general if you want to be dealing with critically ill patients who require emergent intervention you're best off in EM, ICU, trauma, gensurg, CT surg, anesthesia, etc. Keep in mind that with the exception of true "shift based" specialties (EM, ICU, occasionally trauma or acute care surgery), those critically ill patients mean lots of being on call and going to the hospital in the middle of the night. Give me my surgical sub-specialty, elective but cool OR cases, minimal call, and a healthy lifestyle over that any day.
Also remember that things like running codes or traumas, while exciting, are actually extremely formulaic and algorithim driven precisely because its difficult to do deep/complex reasoning when someone is crashing in front of you. A trauma at a well-run trauma center has minimal drama involved as everyone knows their role and gets it done without the yelling and chaos that occurs on TV.
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